Eve Pollard

Presenter0:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young. Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Discs from BBC Radio 4. For rights reasons the music choices are shorter than in the radio broadcast.

Presenter0:10

For more information about the programme, please visit bbc.co.uk/slash radio four.

Presenter0:34

My castaway this week is the journalist Eve Pollard.

Presenter0:37

A former editor of the Sunday Mirror and Sunday Express, she's among the first ladies of Fleet Street. For a while she shared an office with Geoffrey Bernard and Keith Waterhouse. Then there was a time when Lynne Franks was her secretary, whilst Janet Street Porter worked next door. Fleet Street was, she says, like a village, and it looked after its own. Growing up, her parents had no ambitions for her other than to marry and have children. So, after a career that spanned magazines, novels, biographies, and T V, she acknowledges the glass ceilings she's shattered, but comments, No woman who says they have had it all has had it all. You stick by that, do you, Eve Pollard? I'm trying to imagine what it is you've sacrificed along the way.

Eve Pollard1:21

Well, um, you're the last person that gets to the doctor, the dentist. You're always ill on holiday because that's when your body says, Now I've got your attention. You don't have any time for hobbies. But on the other hand, I was very lucky. I had two children, um and I had I had a ringside seat of history because as a journalist you meet everyone, you go everywhere. So I didn't have it all, but I had as much as you can possibly have.

Presenter1:48

I'm trying to imagine sharing an office with uh Keith Waterhouse and Geoffrey Bernard. What on earth was that like?

Eve Pollard1:54

Fantastic. We were all in a features office at one stage and somebody said there's going to be a union meeting at four and then somebody else said, Do you mean we can't play badminton? because we did used to play badminton in the office at four o'clock.

Eve Pollard2:07

These people taught me so much. I mean, they taught me so much about writing, and they taught me so much about having fun.

Presenter2:12

How old were you when you were working with them? I was

Eve Pollard2:14

But twin Yeah.

Presenter2:16

And did they treat you with the utmost respect, or were you just these lovely little things around the office dear?

Eve Pollard2:22

Well, those two guys treated me with absolute respect, but of course there was a lot of sexual harassment, as you might call it now. But we didn't think of that, you know, and I was very much used, for example, when I went to the Sunday Mirror, to go down to the head printer and say, Could we change this? Could we change that? Could we please? I was sent there because I was a girl.

Eve Pollard2:42

But you learnt to be funny about it. You know, what would it take to get a kiss from you, a shot of chloroform? would be the answer. You know.

Presenter2:47

Unit you have

Eve Pollard2:47

Had to send it out.

Presenter2:48

So this would be sort of the early seventies then, the sort of the the the almost the height of the dolly bird culture and

Eve Pollard2:50

Drum.

Eve Pollard2:53

Oh yes, we wore biba, and we wore knickers to match our dresses, false eyelashes, and white lipstick.

Presenter2:58

Yeah.

Eve Pollard2:59

Yeah.

Presenter2:59

It was great. We think of people like you and indeed you as having to be sort of tough, hardened creatures that form a sort of carapace to to have been able to rise through the ranks of Fleet Street. Is that fair?

Presenter3:10

At the time

Eve Pollard3:11

him so much happened to me because of luck.

Eve Pollard3:14

Um, of course you had to be tough because

Eve Pollard3:18

As an editor, you're deciding what goes in and what doesn't go in. And a lot of men found that very hard to take. But yes, I mean any woman who has a high-flying job, they don't know who to compare you to. You're not their mum, you're not their sister, you're not their wife. So they make you a sort of monster nanny figure.

Eve Pollard3:39

But you just get on and do it. Yeah.

Eve Pollard3:41

Yeah.

Presenter3:41

Let's get on and do some music then, Eve Pollard. The first disc that we're going to hear this morning, what is it?

Eve Pollard3:46

Well, it's midnight train to Georgia and it was soup ladles at dawn, Fleet Street's finest. For some reason we had a lot of parties in those days and we would get up with soup ladles and this was the party song.

Presenter3:57

Soup ladles as microphones, correct, nice.

Eve Pollard3:58

Correct.

Speaker 44:01

Even

Speaker 44:02

Even

Speaker 44:04

On that midnight train to Georgia

Speaker 44:10

Dead.

Speaker 44:11

Said he's going back.

Speaker 44:15

To a simpler place in time,

Speaker 44:25

Oh let me thy train Georgia

Presenter4:31

That was Gladys Night and the Pips and Midnight Train to Georgia. You said it would be soup ladles at dawn, singing into them as mics at the Fleet Street parties. I'm wondering, was Janet Streetporter one of the backing girls?

Eve Pollard4:39

Uh no, she wasn't, but certainly Lynn Franks once joined in and Wendy Henry, who was my predecessor. She was an editor about ten minutes before me. There were lots and lots of late nights.

Presenter4:50

You've spent your life, of course, then, immersed in the print media. It's under scrutiny right now, like never before. I'm thinking, of course, of the Leveson Inquiry. Ha have you been shocked by the things you've been hearing?

Eve Pollard4:54

Yeah.

Presenter5:00

Yeah.

Eve Pollard5:00

I'm there's a mixture when I listen to the Leveson Inquiry. I mean obviously something did go wrong if there was widespread hacking and I deplore phone hacking and I think most journalists do. But it's very important the protect of free press. I I think it's essential because the press is the only people who holds politicians, finance, all sorts of people to account. It's quite worrying that celebrities and all sorts of people can accuse the newspapers of anything they like. They'll often say, I was convinced my phone was hacked. I only told four people that story. Four people is four people too much. And I want to say as an ex-newspaper editor, you'd be amazed at who sells stories to the newspaper.

Presenter5:46

Invasion of Privacy, of course, isn't you. You you were editing populist titles like The Sunday Express, The Sunday Mirror, through the late eighties and through the mid nineties, of course, you know, plenty of kiss and tell stories, stories about royal life behind the scenes, all of that. Absolutely. Did you ever feel at the time you'd gone too far?

Eve Pollard5:52

Yeah.

Eve Pollard6:02

I don't think I did. Um if I look back now, I think we did loads of kiss and tell.

Eve Pollard6:08

Did people do such terrible things by having affairs with somebody when they were married? Probably not. But what always happened was on a Saturday morning I would sit down with the reporter, the news editor, probably my deputy editor, and the lawyer.

Eve Pollard6:25

And you would go through, stage by stage, exactly where this information came from, what the people told you, what was done. Now, newspapers are commercial enterprises. People have to buy them. You know, they're not forced to buy them. I think if you get the story in the way that we used to I have to say it was before looking through people's bins as well I think that's fair enough but I I think uh listening into their phones is wrong.

Presenter6:51

So you would sit down with the lawyer and the reporter and check the provenance of the story. It therefore must be incredible to you to listen to some the most prominent at one time editors in Fleet Street sit there and say, I had no idea where they were getting the stories from.

Eve Pollard6:55

Correct.

Eve Pollard7:06

Well, I sometimes one is amazed by that, and we shall see as these stories come through if they knew and how much they knew. The other truth is that if you're an editor, and this is not to protect them, the news desks go after stories like, you know, a cat looking for a mouse to drop on your desk, you know? And you often don't know what stories they're on. It's then, of course, up to you.

Eve Pollard7:30

whether you use it, and it's very much up to the lawyer whether he allows you to.

Presenter7:33

You were saying in in your day they didn't rake through the bins. What about paying the police, though? Did that ever go on?

Eve Pollard7:39

I can remember very large dinners at five-star restaurants for the police. I can remember-

Eve Pollard7:45

football match tickets go into them. I remember paying for

Eve Pollard7:51

taxis going back at two in the morning to outlying suburbs where the police lived. Um, I don't think we actually pay them.

Eve Pollard7:59

as such. But we did pay. Mothers, fathers, best friends, husbands, wives, all of whom would talk. I mean, the truth is, news is a commodity and people who have it think I'm going to make money out of it.

Presenter8:13

But surely, Eva, it's come to a sorry pass when trying to find out what's in L. McPherson's knicker drawer means that we can't examine what uh dodgy MPs are up to. If one endangers the other, then it means that in pursuit of the celebrity gossip, which in the end really is, you know, means nothing at all, it means that we endanger the stuff that really means quite a lot.

Eve Pollard8:33

I think that's quite true and I think that one of the things at the end and there will have to be a deal done about how the press is regulated and how that's done. The press should ask for a proper Freedom of Information Act, which we've never had. It's very, very, very hard for a newspaper to find out if people are financially helping themselves. And I think people are as interested, particularly at the moment, in that, as they are about sexual shenanigans.

Presenter9:02

More music. What are we going to hear next?

Eve Pollard9:04

Uh when I was growing up, Elvis Presley was my hero, and he had the same initials, which meant a lot when I was about fourteen.

Speaker 49:11

You know I can't be fine Sit home all alone

Speaker 49:18

You can't call my rabbit At least please telephone And don't be crude

Speaker 49:25

Do hide is true.

Speaker 49:29

Baby, you for me to make

Speaker 49:31

There's something I might say Please not forget my past The future looks bright ahead But don't be cruel

Speaker 49:42

The whole heart is true.

Presenter9:44

That was Elvis Presley and Don't Be Cruel. Let's go back then, Eve Pollard. You were born in London on Christmas Day. Christmas Day. Bad timing from the off. Only one present.

Eve Pollard9:51

Yeah.

Presenter9:54

1945. Your parents weren't from Britain, where did they come from?

Eve Pollard9:58

No, my mother came from Vienna and she came here in 1938 and uh my father came from Hungary and he came here with the Free French in 1940 so you couldn't come much later. And they met in London. They were fantastically proud of being British and they this country had saved their lives. But they were lost and All my grandparents died in concentration camps.

Eve Pollard10:26

And I knew nothing about my grandparents at all. I haven't even seen pictures of them, because my parents

Eve Pollard10:32

Could never talk about it. Could never talk about it. It was taboo. And they came over, we had a tiny family, my mother's brother.

Eve Pollard10:42

was sent to Dachau and my grandparents got him out by paying an enormous fine. And the Dachau at that time was a a work, you know, it was a sort of slave labor. And he got to Britain and he married and had a a daughter. So I have one cousin and I had an an uncle and an aunt. So

Speaker 410:48

Right.

Presenter10:48

Uh

Eve Pollard11:00

It was very strange, and of course, I did feel strange. I mean, I would go on school picnics, and everybody else would have white bread and jam, and I'd have brown bread and salami, so the sandwiches got dumped at the first possible thing because I didn't want to be different. And my mother was absolutely fabulous, and my father was very Victorian and very strict. And I think my whole career has been putting two fingers up to him because he didn't want me to go to university, banned me from going to university, he wanted me to.

Eve Pollard11:35

get married. The problem was he wanted to get

Eve Pollard11:38

me off and married without me having any boyfriends. He didn't want me to go out with boyfriends. So that was a hard

Presenter11:43

So that was a hard trick. Yes, that's tricky. Um tell me more then uh about your mother. A fabulous woman in in what ways?

Eve Pollard11:50

Well, first of all, she was fabulous. It's interesting that she worked uh she worked with my father.

Eve Pollard11:56

But she worked and so all my summer holidays were spent in my father's factory. My father was a mad inventor. He made strange things called a tentomatic, which was a tent that you came out of the roof rack of your car. That did all right for a year or two. That sounds like quite a good idea. Well, it was quite fun. But then he did a he did I mean, he had other years which were

Presenter12:09

That sounds like

Eve Pollard12:15

Disastrous. My mother kept the factory going. She was lovely. She was charming. She was warm. On my best days I think this is my mum. On my worst days I think this is my dad.

Presenter12:27

You say that you think your whole career has sort of been built on putting two fingers up at him. What about when you were a little girl, though? Because we do want to please our parents when we're little.

Eve Pollard12:35

When I was little he was very difficult, and he ran the house with an iron rod. And you could tell

Eve Pollard12:44

By the way, he turned his key in the lock when he came in, what his mood was.

Presenter12:47

Yeah.

Speaker 412:47

Uh

Presenter12:47

But

Eve Pollard12:50

I was very bookish and very sort of solitary and not anything like the sort of daughter he wanted. Let's have some music, Eve Pollard. When I used to go to the factory, they used to play music to people who were working there. And my parents did like musicals. I remember listening to Ethel Merman, who I've got great sort of admiration for her voice. It's that tough voice, and you think real vulnerability underneath and brilliant Irving Berlin lines.

Speaker 413:18

I hear singing and there's no one there I smell blossoms and the trees are bare

Eve Pollard13:18

I hear you singing and there's no one there.

Speaker 413:29

I wonder why I wonder why.

Presenter13:40

Ethel Merman and Dick Haymes and You're Just in Love from the film Call Me Madam Did your parents ever go back, y your mother to Vienna and your father to Hungary?

Eve Pollard13:48

Never. My father actually did once go back to Budapest and Prague. My mother.

Eve Pollard13:55

used to say, How can I go back? She wanted in her heart she would have liked to go back in a way, but she I mean the thing that nobody talks about is when the Jews were thrown out of their flats, the neighbors would come and loot. And so she would say, What would I do if we sat in a cafe and I saw someone wearing my mother's necklace? How would I deal with that? And

Eve Pollard14:18

I think we only discussed it once.

Eve Pollard14:20

That was it, and it was for Botan. And when television programmes came on about concentration camps, they were turned off immediately. And my mother came to Britain as a domestic, aged seventeen.

Eve Pollard14:35

She had never made her bed.

Presenter14:37

And there she was making other people's bags.

Presenter14:40

There was a moment, wasn't there, when your mother's maid, the the the young woman who'd been her personal maid in Vienna actually turned up in London. She came

Eve Pollard14:47

over after the war. And it didn't work out really because the relationship was so close my father didn't like it and rowed with Emma, her name was Emma. Uh but it was heartbreaking because Emma was the one who had all the memories of my mother's life as a sort of middle class Viennese girl.

Presenter15:07

Not being allowed to talk about that time of the war and not being allowed to to ask about grandparents and not really knowing the history of your family beyond your mum and dad, wh what difference do you think that's made to you as a person?

Eve Pollard15:20

I think it's made me much more family orientated because I had such a lack of family. I hope and I think I'm very close to both my children. I spend a lot of time being grandma bonkers to my grandmother.

Presenter15:34

Yes, that's what you're calling grandma bonkers.

Eve Pollard15:36

It's my most honoured title, without doubt.

Presenter15:39

Yeah.

Eve Pollard15:39

Just But Um, Jake, my eight year old grandson. And and when a new baby was born this summer, Matilda, the five year old, said, Arthur, this is Grandma Bong. I'm very lucky. Claudia has very good help because she has to, she works. And I go in and I'm the court jester and I do funny things and we sing and we

Eve Pollard15:58

bake, you know, cupcakes and we laugh and it's a pleasure and a joy and an honor.

Presenter16:04

Let's have some more music, Yves Paula. Then we're going to hear disc number four now. Tell me about this.

Eve Pollard16:09

This I have to be careful because it does make me blub. As I said before, my mother never talked about her parents but adored her father. And we had this record and I remember if I watched carefully her eyes would fill with tears thinking about her father. And there was a terrible frustration. I probably did make me very nosy and want me to be a journalist that I knew I couldn't ask.

Speaker 416:35

I belong.

Eve Pollard16:36

Hello.

Speaker 416:42

I love him.

Speaker 417:32

Yeah.

Presenter17:36

That was Joan Hammond and Oh, my beloved father from Puccini's Gianni Schiki, and you were saying that was very strong memories for you, Eve Pollard, of watching your mother listen to that and her eyes filling with tears.

Eve Pollard17:47

And then having to not talk about the music, what it brought back to her afterwards. You know, literally it's like one of those embarrassing moments where you change the subject. Have you tried to go back? Have you, with, you know, everything at your disposal?

Presenter17:59

I

Eve Pollard18:00

I have thought of doing it, but then I just think I mean, when I think about it, it is so sad and so depressing. And

Eve Pollard18:09

All my family say, We'll come with you, we'll we'll go with you. As you get older, of course, you do c become more fascinated about it. And as you become a grandmother yourself, you realize how much you lost by not having somebody in that position. So maybe I will.

Presenter18:15

To be bad.

Eve Pollard18:26

But every time I think of doing it, I just think there's something else I'd rather do with this time.

Presenter18:32

So you were a bright and bookish little girl, and despite your father saying that he absolutely wanted you just to do the one thing, which was get married and presumably have a family, did you decide for yourself that there was more to the world than this and that you were actually going to have a career?

Eve Pollard18:42

Yeah.

Eve Pollard18:48

I sort of decided it, but like so many things, it happened by accident. I got a job at Simpsons, Piccadilly, and I met all these girls doing

Eve Pollard18:58

fashion journalism because they'd come in and choose clothes for photo shoots and I thought that's what I really want to do.

Presenter19:04

And you managed to get a job as a fashion assistant on Honey. I did. Honey magazine, just just to remind people, was it was a pioneering title in its way. It w it was recognizing a market that hadn't even been acknowledged before.

Eve Pollard19:06

I did.

Eve Pollard19:10

Yeah.

Eve Pollard19:15

absolutely young people who were at that time seen and not heard.

Eve Pollard19:19

I'm still living at home, by the way. I mean you're living at home? Oh, yes,'cause my parents lived in the middle of London and there was no way I earned enough.

Presenter19:21

You're living at home?

Eve Pollard19:26

To pay rent for a flat. And anyway, my parents would have totally disapproved. And if I wanted to go out with a a boy, he had to come home and meet them. Um, like a lot of people who'd been through that Holocaust experience, they were over-protective, over, over, over-worried. You know, they wanted nothing bad else to happen to them. So you weren't.

Presenter19:46

Okay.

Eve Pollard19:47

really having a a swinging sixties London. No, no, no. And I mean, everybody says how swinging London was. I mean, it was exciting. It was lovely. I mean, we used to go out on a Saturday night to somewhere like Earls Court and wait to hear the noise and think that's where the party was and go to the party.

Presenter20:02

And you've said that you used to get engaged as a hobby.

Presenter20:04

Yeah.

Eve Pollard20:04

I did. Well, I was looking for escape.

Presenter20:07

So

Eve Pollard20:09

That was the only way I could escape. So I got engaged a couple of times before I finally did meet uh uh my husband. And Barry, my first husband, Claudia's dad, was brilliant. And even though we subsequently got divorced, we always lived in the same postcode and we spent every Christmas together until she was thirty-four and with his new wife and her mother and their daughter. And when Claudia was thirty-four, I think Barry said to me, I think she's got it now. I think she understands that we love her.

Presenter20:41

Let's have some music then, Eve Pollard. What are we going to hear?

Eve Pollard20:44

When I Claudia was about six months old, I was in a car crash and Barry was in America and those were the times when a record would get released in America, perhaps six months before it came out here. And he came back with the latest Stevie Wonder album and this song was on it. And I was in bed for two weeks with Claudia, who was tiny. This has always been her song.

Speaker 421:07

The sunshine of my life.

Speaker 421:11

Yeah.

Speaker 421:13

That's why I'll always stay wrong

Speaker 421:18

Mm-mm.

Speaker 421:21

You are the apple of my eyes.

Presenter21:28

Uh

Speaker 421:28

Oh revolution

Presenter21:29

You stay in the fold

Speaker 421:31

Uh

Presenter21:33

That was Stevie Wonder and You Are the Sunshine of My Life. And Eve Pollard, that was chosen really for your daughter, Claudia Winkleman, who's the the presenter, very well known and very successful. You said that you you broke up from Claudia's father, Barry. You met Nick Lloyd and and both of your families broke up because of your relationship and you went on to how many years have you been married now? Thirty-two. Thirty-two years. That all happened when you were at the Sunday Mirror. That was a very busy time. Yeah.

Eve Pollard21:59

But I was in the same job for ten years. I was a woman's editor on the Sunday Mirror. I mean the interesting thing about the Sunday Mirror is I actually signed a contract with no maternity leave.

Eve Pollard22:09

So six weeks after she was born, back I went, and I can remember the first day sobbing my heart out in the Lady's Loo.

Eve Pollard22:18

And then realizing she was fast asleep and probably didn't know if I was there or not.

Presenter22:22

What do you make of this whole you know, I don't know how she does it culture, where there as we know, there are very many women columnists who spend their whole time talking about juggling their lives. Do you do you rather wish sometimes that women would just be quiet and get on with it?

Eve Pollard22:35

I don't know. I think they're trying to help other women. And I think that most women columnists earn quite a a decent stipend. I mean, it was quite scary having a nanny. And everybody said, you know, you've got to hang on to her. You know, husbands you can always get, but nannies, you know and I remember w when I was gone back to work and there was an obscene phone call when I came in one day and this is about female journalists' reputation as well. And I I said if somebody phones again, we'll have to phone the police. So she said, Our man phoned yesterday.

Eve Pollard23:05

And I asked her what he'd said, and she repeated all these extraordinary things he was going to do, or he wanted to do to me. And I said, Sandra, why didn't you put the phone down? She said, Oh, I thought he was a friend of yours.

Eve Pollard23:18

It was

Presenter23:18

These are the sort of circles you were mixing in. Yes. Um, so we there's a lot to fit in, Eve Foller, because you have your your professional As well as your personal life, has ranged across many different areas. But I want to skip forward a bit to the time that you were editor-in-chief at Elle. You went to America to do that. You were working for Rupert Murdoch. How did you find that?

Eve Pollard23:35

Do that.

Eve Pollard23:38

Well, I was very lucky because, in fact, Nick had gone to America because he'd done very well. He'd turned the News of the World tabloid. That's your husband, Nick Lloyd. We always say in our family: if you work on the news of the world, that's how you never get into the news of the world. And I went to America and I was writing a column for the Sunday Times. The first time I didn't have a full-time job. Did you?

Presenter23:58

And did you enjoy that?

Eve Pollard23:59

No, I didn't enjoy it. I mean, I loved it at first, and I was just getting to know my way round Bloomingdale's. And Rupert Murdoch had joined with Hachette to launch American L. And Nick brought some proofs home, and I scribbled all over them. And Rupert said, This is not your writing. And Nick said, No, it's Eve's. The next day I had the job. I loved working for Rupert Murdoch. I know that's very unfashionable to say. I mean, imagine this. We go out for lunch and he spends his time talking to your four-year-old son about what cartoons are the best on T V. And then, of course, he's starting T V stations and hey, Presto. He's not just being nice, he's doing some market research. He is.

Presenter24:40

Uh

Eve Pollard24:41

Yeah.

Presenter24:41

But he was great fun to work with.

Eve Pollard24:43

But it's

Presenter24:43

Time for some more music then, Eve Pollard. We're on your sixth choice of the day.

Eve Pollard24:48

All these songs have been chosen because they bring back memories and of course if I'm stuck on this island and getting older of course I may well forget. So we used to play this very loudly and we go to uh the Hamptons at the weekends and this reminds me of New York.

Speaker 425:04

Oh for the diamonds.

Speaker 425:06

Ricks like cream Stronger and harder than a bad girl's dream

Speaker 425:13

Make a bad one good, make your own one right.

Speaker 425:17

Why will love a keep you home at night?

Speaker 425:21

We don't need money, don't take fame Don't need no credit card to ride this train You're starting it's sudden and it's cruel sometimes But if I just leave your eyes

Speaker 425:37

That's the power of love.

Presenter25:39

That was Huey Lewis and the news and the power of love. You were this sort of power couple, really, weren't you, you you and Nick over in America? And you were being groomed, it would seem, by Rupert Murdoch as you rose up through the ranks, and then you told him you were leaving. I can't imagine that was a very easy conversation.

Eve Pollard25:51

Can't imagine.

Eve Pollard25:53

Well, we we left at different times, but it was very difficult. We said to Rupert we can only stay for a year because I have three step children and they were living in England. Other jobs got dangled in front of us, and so when I was offered the editorship of You magazine, which you get with the mail on Sunday, it was pretty hard to turn down.

Presenter26:11

You have had an amazingly varied career. You've written novels, as I mentioned, a biography of Jackie Kennedy. You were features editor at T V M. I want to, though, particularly find out about Captain Bob. You worked for Robert Maxwell. I did. Yes, tell me.

Eve Pollard26:23

I did.

Eve Pollard26:24

Well, he offered me the editorship of the Sunday Mirror. Um he was very nice to me, really. Um he'd never learnt to be rude to women he wasn't related to.

Eve Pollard26:34

He never shouted at you down then? He once shouted at me, and then I got.

Presenter26:34

Do not

Eve Pollard26:39

a desk load of flowers the next day. I think he realized I wasn't nervous of him. I couldn't believe I got this job, and so I imagined every day I would lose it.

Eve Pollard26:49

And there's something you you you know, you emanate from your paws. And of course, actually, he was obsessed by Rupert Murdoch, and he would do something like buy something, and he'd phone me down and say, What do you think your friend Rupert would think of that? And I would want to say, I don't suppose he's noticed.

Presenter27:05

He died in'inety one.'

Eve Pollard27:06

Yes, you did.

Presenter27:06

How did you hear about him dying?

Eve Pollard27:08

I was by then on the Sunday Express. I was amazed that he died.

Eve Pollard27:13

I don't think that he jumped, although he was in terrible financial trouble, as we know now. My feeling is he probably had a heart attack and fell off the side of the boat. I have to say I found working for him quite difficult, but I've worked for worse.

Presenter27:30

Yes, a bit of understatement in that, I think. Working for Bob Maxwell was quite difficult. In the year 2000, you launched a a magazine. The idea was that you wanted to capture that, you know, Honey captured the young market. Your magazine called Aura captured certainly not the old market, but a market that's not very well served by glossy magazines. It was really very well received, but there were problems behind the scenes, there were problems with the actual business of it. And one commentator described it as I'm going to quote this to you, you won't like it, Ab Fab meets faulty towers.

Eve Pollard27:59

Is that fair? Yes and no. I mean, the problem is that I think older women, and I've just designed a range of clothes for older women, um.

Eve Pollard28:08

The trouble with being an older woman is you do feel slightly that you've been forgotten, and yet you are possibly the person who'll have the money, and you are definitely the person who will be loyal to a product that works for you. And everything is now obsessed, youth obsessed. I mean, T V, radio, fashion, shops, everything is. And I thought it would be great to have a magazine. I mean, getting older is no fun. As somebody said, getting older's not for sissies, but it's better than the alternative.

Presenter28:35

And so at Aura, what what what was it that went wrong? You had the the great idea, you had the contacts, you had the writers, but it was just it was it was the business, was it the

Eve Pollard28:43

We couldn't get the advertising and luckily we'd started a wedding magazine that we sold that paid off our debts and I got out of the business. And in many ways I'm probably very glad that I did because it's even tougher now for magazines than it ever has been.

Presenter28:59

Y you mentioned the clothing range that you started. It's funny, isn't it? Most people would just moan about it. You moan about it and then you do something about it. You're just frustrated. Yes.

Eve Pollard29:05

I just

Eve Pollard29:07

Um it's quite nice being a hundred and five, which I now am, and being on a steep learning curve. I think the thing that possibly does keep you young is going off and doing different things.

Presenter29:18

We we've got uh another disc to fit in. What are we gonna

Eve Pollard29:20

What are we going to hear next, Steve? Um, everybody has their song. This is ours, and I don't want to go on about it, but

Eve Pollard29:28

I don't think I'd ever forget, Nick, but if I'm out on a desert island, who knows what will fall out of my memory, so this will remind me.

Eve Pollard29:36

Some get a kick from coke

Speaker 429:39

Kyrgyz

Speaker 429:43

I'm sure that if I took just one more sniff, that would bore me.

Speaker 429:52

Turp a platoon.

Speaker 429:57

Yet I get a kick.

Presenter29:59

I love you.

Presenter30:02

That was Gary Shearston, and I get a kick out of you. You were dedicating that to your husband, Nick Lloyd, Eve Pollard. Do you worry, I wonder, about still being in the game? Because you're very, very busy. You are part of an organisation called in fact, you started it, Women in Journalism. You're vice-chairman, in fact, of this organisation, Well-Being of Women. All sorts of things in the air. Do you worry that there's a point at which the phone will stop ringing?

Eve Pollard30:26

Oh, I'm sure there'll be a I mean, even now I'm I'm not doing as much as I did perhaps five, ten years ago.

Eve Pollard30:34

But I think the work ethic is

Eve Pollard30:37

Very deeply drilled in. And

Eve Pollard30:39

Also, you know, I adore my children, I adore my family, they wouldn't want me round all the time. I mean, you know, they it's nice if you pop in, you know.

Presenter30:47

Are you a very hands on, mother?

Eve Pollard30:50

I was. I mean, you know, I I I was thinking about New York just now and I remember Claudia going on her first date. Nick was posted on the opposite side of the road. I was in the shop next door.

Eve Pollard31:01

I guess I was very hands-on.

Eve Pollard31:04

But you have to be careful not to let them know. She I don't think she knows until this moment that I I was You were on her first date with her. Absolutely.

Presenter31:09

You were on her first date with her? Absolutely.

Eve Pollard31:11

Yeah.

Presenter31:11

The quote in the beginning that I used as as I was introducing you was this idea that any woman who says uh they've had it all has not had it all. What advice have you given to you have a son and a daughter, but I'm thinking particularly of your daughter, Claudia Winkleman, who's who has three children and who's working. What have you what advice have you passed on as as somebody who was a

Eve Pollard31:26

Yeah.

Presenter31:31

A working mother for all those years.

Eve Pollard31:33

Well, number one, I learnt in America two things is you always feel better if you have some running away money. So I've always had a stash of running away money. It's just nice it's there.

Eve Pollard31:44

Secondly, um I learnt from American women particularly.

Eve Pollard31:49

That, you know, don't make life so difficult. You can't cook that complete meal. Go and buy it. But still have people to your house.

Eve Pollard31:57

And I certainly taught her don't live far away from work. I mean I once had an argument with Mrs Thatcher and said, I don't believe that you would ever have done what you did if you hadn't had a constituency in Finchley, if you'd had one in Scotland. It would have been much harder. And reluctantly I did win that argument, which is unusual.

Presenter32:17

Brother.

Eve Pollard32:17

Um, then I say ch the most important thing is choose your partner.

Eve Pollard32:25

The f

Presenter32:26

Yes, very young.

Eve Pollard32:27

And she died of ovarian cancer, which is why I joined Wellbeing of Women.

Presenter32:27

Depends.

Presenter32:31

You must have wondered on more than one occasion what my mother would make of this. I did think that.

Eve Pollard32:36

I mean, my mother was just about alive to see me do the royal first royal ascot I did for twenty-three years, and she was thrilled by that.

Eve Pollard32:45

And she definitely thought that she'd come out of the jaws of hell and for me to be successful, and it's just so sad she didn't see the rest of it.

Presenter32:54

Let's have your final piece of music then. What are we going to hear?

Presenter32:57

Yeah.

Eve Pollard32:57

My son got married this summer and we came out to this music and it's La Vion Rose s a song my mother loved and I I always loved jazz and the trumpet so this seems to mix them all up together.

Speaker 333:11

Hold me close and hold me fast The magic spells you cast This is Love the Iron Rose

Speaker 333:25

When you kiss me, heaven sighs And though I close my eyes, I see love and rose

Speaker 333:39

When you press me to your heart And in a world apart A world where roses bloom

Speaker 333:52

And when you speak, angels sing from above.

Speaker 333:59

Everyday world sings.

Speaker 334:03

Too tiny to love sound

Speaker 334:07

You're heart and soul to me And life will always be

Speaker 334:15

Love we know

Presenter34:17

That was Louis Armstrong and La Vienrose. So I shall give you the books now, Eve Pollard. Traditionally the Bible and the complete works of Shakspere, and one other. What would you like?

Eve Pollard34:27

Well, I I've been very practical on this. There's a book you can get which is Maritime Intelligence and Publications, because I know.

Eve Pollard34:35

I know I'd be waving my knickers at the wrong end of the island, so no boats would be going past. I'd be waving there waiting for a boat, whereas I should be at the other end of the island. So that seems to be the most intelligent thing to do.

Presenter34:48

Yes, I'll give you that book then.

Eve Pollard34:50

And uh a luxury too.

Presenter34:51

Yeah.

Eve Pollard34:51

Yeah.

Eve Pollard34:51

Well, I think to make them stop and rescue me, possibly tweezers or well, because so that I don't look like a mammoth or or um maybe peroxide. I remember Glennis Kinnick and I decided we'd gone prematurely blonde. Um otherwise they'd just think there's a strange animal on there, just we won't bother to stop.

Presenter35:06

I'm not sure if I can do it.

Presenter35:11

So it's the tweezers, is it then?

Eve Pollard35:12

I think probably the trees is

Presenter35:14

Right. And if I had to just force you to to save one of these disks from the waves, which one would you save?

Eve Pollard35:21

I don't know. It very diff I'd probably choose the Puccini in the end because I think there's a lot of it on that disc, so I wouldn't get bored, but it would be a very hard decision for me.

Presenter35:31

It's yours, Eve Pollard. Thank you very much for letting us hear your desert island discs. Thank you.

Presenter36:11

You've been listening to a download from the BBC. You'll find more information on the Radio 4 website: bbc.co.uk slash Radio 4.